You want the best for your clients — that’s probably why you got into consulting in the first place. The best way to set your clients up for success is by running a flawless consulting workshop. The consultancy workshop is where you work with your client to identify problems and implement solutions for their business. It’s the culmination of all your hard work and research. That’s why having strong consulting workshop methods matters.
We’ve helped consultants connect with clients and facilitate decision making with the Top 12 Collaboration Tools for Consultants. We’ll help you add the best tools to your consulting toolbox. These tools will help you run perfect consulting workshops that can help your client get results, whether you’re running a workshop for planning, brainstorming, team training, or anything else.
What is a workshop in consulting?
Your consulting training probably focused a lot on how to run a successful workshop. As a consultant, you could hand your client a beefy document with all your research and solutions — or you could run a workshop, where you and your client work collaboratively in a structured session to set goals, analyze problems, make decisions, build a stronger team, and improve their business.
Though workshop methods vary according to the consultant and the kind of business they’re consulting on, consultation workshop typically follows this format:
- Opening and introduction.
- Set context and provide background information.
- Conduct interactive activities like brainstorming, SWOT analysis, and case studies.
- Keynote speakers or presentations.
- Establish key takeaways, reflect, give, and receive feedback.
- Develop an actionable plan — assign teams, align stakeholders, and set deadlines,
- Summary and conclusion.
Workshop facilitators often continue to support their clients after the workshop is over, offering helpful documents and conducting regular check-ins to make sure solutions are being implemented.
Why use tools to facilitate your business consulting workshops
Using the right tools for consulting workshops can make a huge impact on the effectiveness of your workshop. Plus, they’ll make it way more fun and memorable for your participants. In fact, 85% of modern workshops use some kind of technology tools for their workshops, and there’s a reason for that — a study by UC Irvine showed that technology tools boost efficiency by 30% and participant engagement by 20%.
Whether you’re running a business consulting workshop, a project management consulting workshop, or a technology consulting workshop, there’s a box of interactive workshop tools that can help your workshop go off without a hitch.
Top 7 tools to boost your consulting and training sessions
Here are our favorite tools for boosting engagement and effectiveness in your workshop consulting. As always, there’s a mural for that! Check out our extensive library of tools and templates for consulting workshop ideas.
1. Icebreakers
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, ice breakers are a time-honored warmup to get everyone in the right head space to learn and engage. “Two truths and a lie” will probably elicit some eye rolls — try something new! Our secret superpower icebreaker template, nice to know you icebreaker template, or my space right now icebreaker template can grease the wheels.
2. SWOT analysis boards
When you say it out loud, it sounds like a sting operation debrief. In reality, it’s a lot less sexy (or is it?). “SWOT” stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A report by McKinsey & Company indicated that companies using SWOT analysis see a 20% improvement in identifying and addressing critical issues. Start with Mural’s simple SWOT testing template. Participants can add to the analysis on their own with sticky notes.
3. Brainstorming templates
Nothing is off limits in a brainstorm. Well, some things are off limits in a brainstorm. Add structure to your brainstorm with one of our brainstorming templates: brainstorm and idea prioritization template, mind map brainstorm template, “how might we” questions template, and alternative worlds template. Your participants can use Mural’s native tools like voting and commenting to choose the best ideas.
4. Customer journey maps
To identify areas of improvement in your client’s business, it’s important to understand the full customer experience. What might be preventing leads from converting? Where in the funnel are they dropping off? Try this customer experience journey map template or this jobs to be done journey map template.
5. Empathy maps
An empathy map, like a customer journey map, aims to understand the customer experience. An empathy map, however, identifies how the customer thinks and feels about the product or service, and how that determines what they do. Check out our empathy map and empathy map canvas templates to get started.
6. Stakeholder maps
A stakeholder map, or stakeholder analysis, is one of the most important tools for project management workshops and consulting. It identifies and prioritizes key stakeholders for certain projects or initiatives, establishes communication and feedback channels, and assesses the level of interest or influence each stakeholder has in the project — thus keeping everyone accountable. Start mapping your client’s who’s-who and who-does-what with Mural’s simple stakeholder map template.
7. Action plan
When you’re ready to hand the reins over to your client, you’ll want to leave them with a clear and concise action plan so they know how to implement the solutions you’ve come up with together. The action plan will also serve to align stakeholders and players so they know who’s responsible for what, when it’s due, what resources are needed, and what its impact will be. This easy-to-follow action plan template is a great starting point.
Get an all-in-one consulting toolkit for your workshops with Mural
Run flawless consulting workshops with Mural. Your Mural consulting workshop toolkit helps you contemporaneously collaborate with clients, save time with an extensive template library, and increase participant engagement with features like sticky notes, laser pointer, voting, and commenting. Mural easily integrates with other platforms like Zoom and Teams, allowing you to run seamless virtual consulting workshops.
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